He leaned over to kiss me. “That’s a myth, you know, that they cut off their breasts. And I especially like yours, so don’t do anything rash. Although that’s the most futile statement ever made, considering the way you’ve been treating your body the last ten days.”

“Spoken by the man who still has a bullet chip near his spine.”

He handed me a carry-on bag, packed with his usual precision: toothbrush, hairbrush, bra, clean jeans, and a cotton sweater. The bra was my favorite rose-and-silver lace, which I’d left at his place several weeks ago, but the clothes were his. We’re the same height, and the clothes were a pretty good fit—although I’d never have gotten the jeans buttoned if I hadn’t been fasting for thirty-six hours.

We took a cab to my apartment, where Mr. Contreras and the dogs greeted me as a sailor returned from a shipwreck. My neighbor had bathed Mitch and taken him to the vet, who’d put stitches in one of his feet where he’d sliced it on a can or the barbed wire. After his initial ecstasy, Mitch went back inside my neighbor’s apartment and climbed up on the couch to sleep. Mr. Contreras didn’t want to leave him, so we settled in the old man’s kitchen. Mr. Contreras began making pancakes, and we exchanged war stories.

When he’d seen Mitch lead me into the swamp, Mr. Contreras had tried to follow us in the car, but the road went too far to the west of where we were walking, and, anyway, after a couple of minutes he couldn’t see us at all through the marsh grasses. He’d gone back to the place where Mitch started into the swamp, but after half an hour a state trooper came along and ordered him to leave.

“I tried to tell the guy you was lost in there, and he says, tell the local cops, not him, it’s Chicago’s responsibility, so I beg him to call the Chicago cops, and he won’t, only tells me he’ll impound the car if I don’t move it, so I had to go home.” The old man’s voice was still thick with grievance. “When I got home, I called 911, and they told me to wait until morning, and, if I hadn’t heard from you, to file a missing persons. I should have called Captain Mallory, I guess, didn’t think of that, but, anyway, by and by I heard from Morrell here, he told me about Mitch leading you all the way to that Miss Love.”